It is sometimes easy to forget how far club rugby union has travelled. A mere 20 seasons ago the game was still stubbornly amateur and West Hartlepool and Orrell were shoulder-to-shoulder with England’s elite sides. European club rugby had yet to be invented and the relegated stragglers in the 10-team Courage League of 1994-95 were Northampton, with promoted Saracens replacing them.

Compare and contrast as the 2014-15 Premiership season prepares to kick off at a gleaming Franklin’s Gardens on Friday. Northampton are now the league’s champions, having clinched their title in extraordinarily dramatic circumstances at Twickenham in front of 81,193 spectators. Saracens have gone from park-pitch bedouins to global prominence; Leicester have just announced their turnover for the last 12 months was £19.4m. West Hartlepool, for their part, will kick off in North One East while Orrell entertain Ashton-on-Mersey in South Lancs/Cheshire Division Two.

It is, in short, a whole new ball game, one destined to change still more radically over the next two decades.

One glance at the training facilities at Bath, the corporate potential of Harlequins, the cash-splashing at Gloucester and the empire-building at Saracens is enough to appreciate there is further growth left in the club game if the on-field product is good enough. Factor in the 2015 Rugby World Cup and rugby’s re-entry to the Olympics in 2016 and a golden era is within tantalising reach.

All of which makes this latest campaign crucial for the game and every club in the Premiership and the Guinness Pro12, the latter under new sponsorship but with Leinster again favourites to win a third successive title. Teams do not suddenly need to start acting like the Harlem Globetrotters but rarely has there been a better time to banish lazy stereotypes about domestic rugby in Britain and Ireland. The women of England and Ireland have already transformed perceptions during last month’s World Cup. Now it is the men’s turn.

That means playing with heads up rather than down, with subtlety as well as power. Stuart Lancaster has much of his World Cup squad already sketched in but room can always be found for fresh talent with the supreme spatial awareness shown by New Zealand’s Ben Smith against England in the summer.

The early games of the season will also pit international hopefuls against each other at a pivotal juncture in their careers, with Billy Twelvetrees up against Luther Burrell and Ben Morgan facing Tom Wood and friends. There is nil scope for first-night nerves and Warren Gatland will hope his trio of Welsh internationals – George North, Richard Hibbard and James Hook – look equally sharp.

Whatever the outcome, a personal hunch is that Northampton will find it extremely hard to reclaim their English crown next May. This is less a reflection on their considerable ability – they will be significant players in Europe too – than the collective determination of their rivals to improve on last season. There is a clear case for arguing that every single Premiership squad looks stronger than last season. This, in turn, suggests the top four will be harder than ever to gatecrash. If Bath, with a heavy-duty squad and Sam Burgess on his way, cannot be sure of making the play-offs no one can relax.

Even last season’s bottom-but-one stragglers Newcastle Falcons have muscled up significantly, laid down a new synthetic pitch and promised a more positive outlook.

London Welsh have signed enough players to fill an Oxford college; London Irish have invested heavily in new training facilities. Exeter Chiefs will once more be among the most watchable sides in the league but their head coach, Rob Baxter, agrees with those who reckon the top three or four clubs will take some shifting. “There are obviously reasons why they’re up there: strengths of squads, the financial side of things. They’re massive and everyone’s aware of that. But we don’t think there’s much difference between us finishing eighth or fifth. Last year we lost three home Premiership games by a point despite having led in the second half. That’s the difference.”

Saracens, however, lost only three league games all season and must be favourites to top the table for a third successive season. Their challenge is to develop a sprint finish, something Leicester and Wasps have done well in the past, and the Tigers will chase them all the way. The spectre of being the second-best side in the east Midlands will certainly motivate Richard Cockerill’s men, particularly with Manu Tuilagi and Tom Croft back fit. As Northampton’s Dylan Hartley sagely put it: “We’re aware people will be coming after us.”

That massed pursuit will start tonight, although Gloucester’s flanker Matt Kvesic misses out with a foot problem and will be replaced by the former England Under-20 captain Jacob Rowan. Ben Foden can only make the Saints bench but Alex Corbisiero is available for a potentially fascinating duel with Gloucester’s expensive recruit from Ulster, John Afoa.

Lancaster will also be looking forward to seeing how many of this year’s world-beating England Under-20 side secure regular Premiership game-time. Among the multitude of promising youngsters out there, the Saracens’ back-rower Maro Itoje will generate the most ripples, while Wasps’ Rob Miller and Elliot Daly, Northampton’s Teimana Harrison, Exeter’s Henry Slade and Luke Cowan-Dickie and Harlequins’ Jack Clifford and Kyle Sinckler have the ability to prosper if they can stay fit. Nine months of educational big bang theory awaits them.